


Scared of the Dark

by onceandfuturekiki



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 21:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7480758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceandfuturekiki/pseuds/onceandfuturekiki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place during Into the Frostweald. After talking to his sister, Vax decides he's done with fear. He wants Keyleth to be done with it, too. A rough version of this was posted to tumblr months ago, not long after the episode aired. This is a much more polished, complete version.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scared of the Dark

Keyleth was somewhat unsurprised to find Vax sitting on the floor outside of her room when she returned from helping Percy. She had been expecting him the last time they had spent the night in Scanlan’s mansion, and had been disappointed when he didn’t show. Ever since she had told him that she loved him, but was too scared of losing him to let herself love him any more, their relationship had been in a strange limbo, even more uncertain than it had been before, if that was possible. In the nights since he hadn’t come to her again. After what she had said to him she wasn’t expecting it, but she still felt a bit of surprise, and more than a bit of disappointment, every time she woke up in the morning, realizing that Vax hadn’t come to her the night before.

But now she was greeted to the familiar sight of him outside of her door. When she stopped in front of him, Vax moved to his feet, his eyes on her face the whole time. As she looked into his eyes, Keyleth quickly noticed that he looked far less… anguished than he had the past several days. There was still a certain brooding there that seemed to be ever present, but he didn’t seem to be in so much pain.

The fact that this observation made her so happy just made her more certain that she loved him.

“Hi,” she said, unable to help the small smile that crept across her face.

“Hi,” he responded.

“I was helping Percy make something. Well… I was watching Percy make something. It was too small for me to really help, and he said that I wouldn’t get it anyway, so I just kind of sat there…” she trailed off, realizing that she was rambling. “I couldn’t sleep,” she finished lamely.

Vax nodded at her, and she could tell that he was preoccupied. “I need to talk to you.”

Well…  _that_  certainly surprised her.

“Umm… sure. Come inside,” she said, moving past him to open the door. Feeling his presence behind her, Keyleth’s nerves start to jangle, making her hands jittery. “How did you know I wasn’t in the room?” she asked, trying to fill the silence.

“I didn’t,” he responded, seeming a bit perplexed at her question.

“But… you were just sitting outside the door.”

“I knocked. There was no answer. So I decided to wait.”

“Until I got back?”

“Or until you woke up.”

A nervous lump suddenly formed in her throat, and she tried to swallow past it. “So this is important?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”  If Vax was here,  _asking_  to talk, if he’d actually sat outside her room waiting so that he could have a conversation with her, then it had to be serious. She couldn’t imagine what he was going to say. We he going to tell her that he didn’t want to deal with her indecisiveness and her cowardice and that he was moving on? Or was it something worse? Something about the deal he had made with the Raven Queen for Vex’s life?

Nausea swept over her as her mind raced and she sank down to the edge of her bed, her arms wrapped around her middle protectively. He stood before her, watching her, and even in the dark of the room she could she the hint of worry that started to creep into his eyes as he watched her.

“I was talking to my sister…” he began.

“About us?” she asked without thinking. She knew how cagey Vax had been with Vex about their relationship, so the idea that he’d actually talked to her about it seemed almost absurd to Keyleth.

“No. We were talking about…” he hesitated, looking at her before averting his gaze to the floor. “Something else.”

“Something else?”

“It’s not important.”

The worry and the nausea grew worse at his evasion. “Obviously it is, since you’re trying so hard not to tell me.”

“It really isn’t important, Kiki.”

“Then tell me. If it’s not a big deal, then just tell me.” Keyleth could tell that her voice was growing frantic, but she couldn’t control the way the confusion and worry was putting her on edge.

His eyes were on her once again. She could feel his concerned gaze studying her, and finally he acquiesced. “She’d been reading about the Raven Queen and she wanted me to know that she wasn’t evil or anything so I shouldn’t be so worried about the deal I made. And she wanted me to know that she’s… proud of me.” The words came out in a rush, as though he hoped that if he said it fast enough it wouldn’t sink in.

“Proud of you? What, she saying it was a good thing?” she asked, somewhat appalled. “That you made a deal to give your life to the goddess of death?”

“No, it’s…” he came to kneel in front of her, grasping her hands in his. “I had a dream the other night. She spoke to me. The Raven Queen. She told me she wants me to be her champion.”

“But… she’s the goddess of death. So what does that even mean?”

“I can’t say I know for sure. I’m not exactly an expert on these things. But she’s not evil. She’s all about respecting death. It’s not that she wants more people to be dead. The people she’s against are those who don’t respect death.”

“So… like, the Briarwoods?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“But still,” Keyleth pressed, her hands squeezing his. “What does this all mean? What do you have to do?”

“I don’t know,” Vax sighed. “And I’m not going to lie and say that I wouldn’t rather not have had to make the deal, but I’m not scared anymore. The other night, after I had that dream… I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do.”

A brief pain pierced her heart at the thought of him waking up so scared and confused, and that in the moment he hadn’t come to her as he had in the past. And she hated herself because she knew the reason he hadn’t had been what she had said to him back in her room at Whitestone.

“I’m trying not to be scared anymore,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Keyleth nodded, certain that he was here to tell her that she was being a coward. It was true, she knew it was, but the idea of Vax saying it hurt.

“Before I say anything else,” he started, his words slow and tentative. “I want you to know that I still mean what I said at the Sun Tree. If you really don’t want me, I understand, and I will respect that.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you-“ Keyleth began.

“No, I know. But it stands. Whatever choice you make, I’ll respect it,” he assured her. Taking in a deep breath, he gripped her hands tighter and leaned forward, looking into her eyes. “I just… I don’t want you to make a decision because you’re scared of something. I know, that sounds like I’m trying to tell you what to do, but after talking to Vex I started thinking about how so many of the things that all of us do seem to be because we’re afraid of something. I know that a lot of what I do is because I’m scared and my life is a fucking mess.”

“Scared? You?” she asked, surprised and a little angry. “No, Vax. That’s the whole problem. You  _aren’t_  scared. You aren’t scared of things that you  _should_  be scared of! You aren’t scared of dying, so you put yourself in situations where you might die constantly and I have to always be worried that I’m going to lose you. You  _not_  being scared is the problem.”

Most of Keyleth expected him to stand up and walk out of the room. The only thing that made Vax flee faster than emotional confrontation was being confronted with the pain he caused the people he loved. So she was surprised by how his grasp on her hands and his eyes on hers remained steadfast. “Do you know what happened when I nearly died at the palace during the encounter with the Briarwoods?”

Keyleth shook her head, trying to remember the sequence of events from that horrible night. “Uh… we took you to the temple of Sarenrae, and then that horrible fight happened with Lillith…”

“No,” Vax stopped her. “What happened to  _me_.”

Her brow furrowed, her confusion growing. “Like I said, we took you to the temple-“

“I realized that I’m in love with you,” he said bluntly, cutting her off.

She gaped at him, stunned and unsure of how to respond. Hearing Vax tell her the actual moment of his realization, it made his feelings for her, their entire situation, more tangible in a way. Suddenly the whole situation, which had always felt elusive and impossible to quantify, became a bit more solid, and she started to feel like maybe it was something she could grasp, something she could hold on to.

“I mean… I knew I was jealous when Kashaw kissed you. And I knew there was something about the way I felt when we were pretending to be married when we were after the Rashsaka,” he continued, looking down at their joined hands, his voice wistful. “And I remember following you into the Fire Plane, ignoring my fears, just knowing that I would follow you anywhere. But I had no idea… not until I almost died. Not until you were the thing I saw before I died.”

“Vax…” Keyleth said, a trace of wonder in her voice. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m trying to demonstrate,” he said, bringing his gaze back up to hers. “I didn’t realize I love you right there in Anders’ office. I knew before that. But I didn’t tell you because I was scared. I don’t even know that I would have told you then if I hadn’t lost so much blood and been so out of it. I was scared to tell you. I think the reason I didn’t even realize it, didn’t admit it to myself until that night with the Briarwoods… it was because I was scared.”

A faint blush crept across her cheeks, and she couldn’t help the small, pleased smile that found its way to her face. Unable to think of anything she could possibly say in response to Vax’s confession, she brought his hands up to her lips, peppering tiny kisses across his knuckles. The truth was, she didn’t have a single moment she could pinpoint as having realized she loved him. It had happened gradually, and by the time he kissed her in Anders’ office she had already been falling asleep, thinking of him every night, wishing he was there with her for a long time. It was something that she had tried hard not to think about, but it was always there in the back of her mind, and she couldn’t remember when it started. So, unable to make a confession of her own, Keyleth continued to press soft kisses to the backs of his hands, not trying to hide the smile on her face.

He smiled back at her, taking one of his hands from her grasp and cupping her jaw, his fingers sliding beneath the hair that fell loosely around her face as his thumb stroked her cheek.

“That’s one time though, Vax. You were scared of one thing. When it comes to the big things, the actually scary things, you’re not scared. And  _that’s_  scary for  _me_.” She wondered if he even understood what she was trying to tell him, if he could even understand the kind of fear she was talking about.

“I am scared of those things,” he said, his eyes lowering. “I’m scared of everything. I am scared of dying.”

“Then why do you act the way you do?”

Vax’s hand left her face to join the other and close around her own hands once again. His brow furrowed as he studied her hands, running his fingers along her own, dipping them into the valleys between her knuckles, tracing the faint veins of her wrists. After a long, silent moment, he finally spoke.

“I don’t like spending too much time thinking. I don’t like being inside of my own head. It’s… it’s not the best place to be,” he sighed, a heavy, frustrated sound. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to explain it. I think that… it’s not that I do those thing because I’m not scared. I do them so I don’t have to think about how scared I am.”

His words had stunned Keyleth into silence. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to his admission. He’d never been so open about himself with her before. Even in all of his declarations of love for her, he’d never laid himself so bare. Despite how badly she wanted to say  _something_  to him, to comfort him, or meet his offering of honesty with one of her own, she found that her mind was blank.

“I don’t want to be like that anymore,” he said, watching his fingers run across her palm.  “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to not be scared. But I don’t want to let it run my life anymore. Especially if it’s going to cost me you.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I were… more careful, if I stopped rushing into danger without thinking, risking my life constantly… would that be enough? Would that be enough to at least lessen your fears?”

“Vax,” she sighed, trying to will away the tears that she knew were coming. “It’s not that simple. No matter how long you live, I’ll still have to watch you die.”

He looked up into her eyes, and she could see that familiar yearning there, but it was combined with something that was far less lost than what she was so used to seeing there. “And I don’t want you to do this just because you think it might win me over.”

“I’m not,” Vax said, his words emphatic. “I promise you, I’m not. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope…”

A tear escaped her eye as she looked down, wishing she could give him the answer he wanted to hear. Why couldn’t she? Why couldn’t she just push her fear aside, or overcome it?

When he saw her tears, he stopped his exploration of her fingers, bringing both of his hands back to her face. “I want more for you than that,” he said. “I want more for you than a life of fear. Even if it’s not with me.”

“I don’t know how not to be scared.”

“Neither do I. But we can’t let it take over our lives. We can’t let it destroy anything good we might have. I know it won’t be easy, and I’ll probably fuck it up a lot. But…” he trailed off, his eyes going distant for a moment before looking back at her. “I haven’t been really happy since I was a child, when Vex and I were with our mother. I want to be happy again. I don’t know how good of a job I’ll do at it, but I want it.”

“I want it for you, too,” she said.

“And I want it for  _you_ ,” he replied.

“I am- I mean I’m-“ Keyleth found herself stuttering, unable to deny what Vax had said.

“Are you? You’re so scared of losing people that you’re pushing us all away. The longer your life goes on the less happy you’ll be.”

“But it won’t hurt so bad in the long run.”

“Do you remember what your father said back in Pyrah?” Vax asked.

She nodded, the words coming back to her. Telling her to push through the pain and find the joy in life, that the pain is what makes the joy burn so brightly.

She’d been thinking about the words since she’d heard them. She’d tried to disregard them, but if anyone knew what they were talking about in this regard, it was her father. Her heart longed to follow his advice.

“I regret,” Vax said, watching his fingers as they moved across her cheek in a deliberate way that told Keyleth he was avoiding eye contact. “That I didn’t have more time with my mother. It still hurts, that loss. Just as much as it hurt the day Vex and I returned to our home and found that she was dead.” His voice was growing thick with tears, and she found herself leaning into him, her arms going around his waist, trying to pull him closer. He went, his forehead pressing against hers. “And there isn’t a single day that I don’t wish I had had just one more hour with her. That Vex and I hadn’t had to go to Syngorn, or that we’d run away sooner, or that we hadn’t stayed out on or own for so long. I regret every single day that I chose not to have that time with her.” He swallowed hard, letting out a shaky breath. “And I’m certain your father would say the same thing about your mother.”

The mention of her mother felt almost like a physical jolt. Keyleth had been so young when her mother left on her Aramente. She barely remembered her. When she thought about that loss and the pain she still felt from it, it felt less like she was mourning a person she loved and more that she was mourning an idea, a concept of what having a mother would be.

But she did wish that she could have had more time with her. That she could actually remember more than little flashes and pieces. When she thought of her mother the first thing that came to mind was the look on her father’s face every day that passed that his wife didn’t come home. Keyleth wanted more than that. She wanted memories with her mother.

“We can do this together,” Vax continued. “We can help each other.”

Keyleth’s eyes ran over his face, amazed at how serious he was. She could tell that this wasn’t just an impulse he was having. He meant all of it.

She loved him. She loved him so much she ached with it. The past few days, since the night back in Whitestone when he’d walked out of her room, she’d been hurting, and she knew he had been as well. The pain of just not being with him, not talking to him, the way he’d been avoiding her eyes and keeping his distance was different than anything she’d really experienced before. It wasn’t the horrifying, dizzying pain she’d felt when Pike and Vex had died. And it wasn’t the long-lasting intangible hurt that always existed in the back of her mind over the loss of her mother. It was something new that she’d never experienced before, a new kind of hurt all its own.

That pain was something she’d been thinking about in the few days since Pyrah. It had stopped for a long moment there, when she’d helped Vax up after he closed the rift. He’d looked at her the way he had before that night in Whitestone, like she was made of magic, like she was the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen. That one, brief moment had made her so happy that, for a second, she hadn’t even been thinking about how scared she’d been, watching him dive toward that portal, falling toward it, once again coming so close to death.

She wanted to feel that happiness as often as she could. When she remembered him she wanted that happiness to be what she felt. She wanted memories with Vax.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Okay?” Vax echoed, his voice surprised and hopeful.

“I’ll help you and you’ll help me,” Keyleth said. “We’ll do it together.”

He nodded eagerly, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. “You’re sure?”

“I think so,” she replied. “I want this. I want to be happy.”

His hands moved from her face to her back as his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her into a hug. Parting her legs, she pulled his body between them, as close to her as she could get him, as she wrapped her own arms around his shoulders.

“I love you,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her jaw.

“And I love you,” she whispered back, placing her own kiss on his temple. “I love you,” she said again, following this time with her lips pressing into his cheek.

He pulled back then, looking into her eyes, more certainty in his expression than she had ever seen. She brought her hands up, her palms pressing into his jaw, the fingers on one hand brushing against the pulse in his neck. His gaze softened as he started to lean in to her, his hands moving up her back to pull her closer.

And then she yawned. Vax pulled back, watching her as she did so, his thumbs stroking at her sides absentmindedly.

“You’re tired,” he said with an amused smile.

She nodded. “I haven’t been sleeping well at all. I’ve missed you,” she said, feeling a blush bloom across her cheeks

“I know the feeling,” he replied, his hands stroking up and down soothingly at her waist.

“Stay?” she asked, already starting to scoot back against the bed, his face still in her hands.

Vax nodded enthusiastically, following her back on his hands and knees. As she fell onto her back against the pillows he loomed over her, leaning in to press a long, deep kiss to her lips. She responded with the same intensity, her hands still clutching his face. The realization hit her that this was the first proper kiss they’d ever had. The first time they’d kissed had been in Anders’ study, where he’d been barely cognizant of his actions, to the point where he didn’t even remember it properly later. She’d given him a quick kiss back in Vasselheim, after the battle with Earthbreaker Groon, but that hadn’t been more than a peck. The moment they were in, with his lips moving over hers slowly and deliberately, was their first fully conscious, 100% mutual,  _real_  kiss.

She enjoyed the way her world went fuzzy around the edges while their lips were moving together, the pleasant way her heartbeat sped up. She moved her hand down to Vax’s chest, pressing her palm over his heart, feeling that his heartbeat had quickened as well, matching rhythm with hers.

Panic rose in her as he started to pull away. She wanted to keep him close to her. She didn’t want him to stop. She wanted it all, everything they could have, right now.

 _You have time_ , Keyleth told herself.  _You don’t have to do it all at once_.

So she let him go as he moved away, smiling down at her. He pressed a final kiss to her forehead before moving to the other side of the bed. Sitting up, she gathering the blankets she had kicked away from herself earlier in the night, when she couldn’t sleep, and covered them both as she laid back. Vax’s arms wrapped around her, pulling her close, her back to his chest so she could feel every breath he took. She rested her head against his outstretched arm and her fingers slid between his where they rested against her stomach.

She pressed back against him, tangling her legs with his, as he placed a kiss behind her ear. “Goodnight,” he whispered. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered back, her hand squeezing his.

Vax’s breath brushed against her neck, moving her hair, as it became deeper and steadier, until she could tell he had fallen to sleep. Then she allowed herself to follow him, falling into the first deep sleep she’d had in days.

THE END


End file.
